干涉效應與語法隱性部門

• Main Authors: Yang, Barry Chung-Yu, 楊中玉
• Other Authors: Tsai, Wei-Tien Dylan
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/55753071125258985830

博士 === 國立清華大學 === 語言學研究所 === 97 === The exploration on wh-intervention effects generally suffers from distributional variations both across languages and within languages. Meanwhile, speaker judgment is also reported to be inconsistent (Kuno & S.-Y. Kim 2004, Miyagawa & Endo 2004, among others). Though recent researches tend to limit their discussions to the focus intervention effect (Kim 2002, 2005, Beck 2006) since it enjoys a more stable distribution, new language data show that such an approach still runs into some problems (Miyagawa & Endo 2004, Tomioka 2007). This thesis has three aims: i) to subsume the variations of intervention effects into two types of syntactic effects: Minimality Effect and Competition Effect; ii) to testify the Split-CP hypothesis (Rizzi 1997, 1999, 2002); iii) to extend the domain of intervention effects to other syntactic dependencies. To begin with, I show that Mandarin Chinese provides a clear picture for us to sort out the puzzling variations of intervention effects. I propose that the above variations can be best captured if we categorize them into two types of syntactic effects: Minimality Effect and Competition Effect, each of which is triggered by independent factors. The Minimality Effect occurs when the feature movement of [α] from Y to X is blocked by an intervening Z which bears the same feature as X and Y do (cf. Starke 2001, Rizzi 2002). Assuming Tsai’s (1994) parametric approach toward wh-in-situ construal, we can easily extend the Minimality Effect to account for various distributional differences. The Competition Effect is derived from a traditional notion “one-slot-per-Comp”. This simple idea elegantly explains both the embedding problem of the focus effect (Tomioka 2007), the d-linking problem of the pragmatic effect (Miyagawa & Endo 2004), as well as several other puzzles. Next, I show that the Minimality Effect and the Competition Effect can also be located in the CP domain, which brings together several seemingly unrelated phenomena involving the rhetorical wh, the refutatory wh, the evaluative adverb, and the wh-argument/adjunct interaction, with a uniform analysis. The analysis developed in this study thus lends further support to the Split-CP hypothesis (Rizzi 1997, 1999, 2002). Then, I proceed to probe the intervention effects in wider contexts and show that the licensing of negative polarity items (NPIs) and free choice items (FCIs) are also subject to intervention effects. Specifically, evidence from the contrast between the NPI/FCI renhe ‘any’ and the wh-indeterminate shows that the intervention effects occur not from the interruption of c-commanding/binding relation between the licensor and the NPI/FCI or wh-indeterminate, but from the interruption of feature movement. This further testifies that the Minimality Effect is on the right track. To conclude, I propose that the puzzling distributions of intervention effects can be reduced to two independent effects which in turn can be extended to the left periphery of CP and further to the licensing of the NPI/FCI. Hopefully, this study can bring a step closer to the understanding of intervention effects on the one hand and to the characterization of wh-in-situ construal on the other.